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Mike Davis, whose 2006 book The Monster at Our Door warned of the threat of a global bird flu pandemic, explains how globalized agribusiness set the stage for a frightening outbreak of the swine flu in Mexico.

The meaning of the policies of the main governments of the world is clear: to make the popular sectors pay the cost of the crisis and to try to prop up the present model with timid reforms that assure its viability

The 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul in March, bringing together governments, water companies and ’experts’, once again mapped out the future of water as a private commodity. Just as in Mexico in 2006, protesters clashed with police and demanded that access to water be considered a human right.

The G20 summit meeting in London from April 1st onward was loudly announced and publicized. Those 20 industrialized and emergent countries (G20) were meeting to find solutions to the crisis. But long before the end of the summit, it was clear that they would not rise to the challenge.

In Martinique, the general strike launched on February 5 by the Intersyndical (inter-union coordination) immediately took on, by its scale and its ongoing dynamic, just as in Guadeloupe, a political dimension of challenging the injustice, the exploitation and the oppression that exist in Martinique society

Éric Toussaint argues in favour of globalising the anti-capitalist Left and against the social-liberal or social democrat Left, as is to be found in governments such as those of Lula, Gordon Brown, Daniel Ortega or José-Luis Zapatero.

Nearly four months after the immense youth revolt that followed the killing by a policeman of young Alexis Grigoropoulos, it is indisputable that it has become a reference point not only in Greece, but also at least in Europe, where you can hear for example on French student demonstrations: ’’Guadeloupe everywhere, a general Greece!’’.

On 25 May, the long-awaited and campaigned-for referendum on changing Ireland’s very restrictive abortion law – encapsulated in the 8th amendment to the constution – will finally be held. The very broad-based Trade Union Campaign to Repeal the 8th launched a tabloid campaign newspaper on 1 May. We publish their press realease below.

The Spanish state’s repression against Catalonia’s democratic rights gets worse every day. There are at this moment 10 leading politicians and activists in prison, without having been condemned of any crime. They are accused of violent rebellion, although they have never used violence. By mid April the two leaders of the main Catalanist organisations, Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sánchez, will have spent 6 months in prison.